Abdullah Qardash

Abdullah Qardash, also known as Hajji Abdullah al-Afari, was Caliph of the Islamic State from 26 October 2019, succeeding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Biography
Abdullah Qardash was born in Tal Afar, Iraq to a family of Sunni Turkmen origin, and he served as an officer in the Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein until his overthrow in 2003 during the Iraq War. That same year, he was detained by US forces at Camp Bucca, where he met Ibrahim al-Badry, a detained extremist imam from Baghdad. The two became close associates, and Qardash became a senior Islamic State leader after al-Badry proclaimed himself Caliph "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi". On 22 August 2019, Baghdadi appointed Qardash to run the Islamic State's "Muslim affairs", and Qardash took over most of the Islamic State's day-to-day affairs, even as it had been reduced to an insurgency of fugitive jihadists. On 27 October 2019, a day after Baghdadi was killed in a Delta Force raid on Barisha in Idlib Governorate, Qardash was proclaimed the new Caliph of the Islamic State, although the title had lost much of its significance by the time of Baghdadi's demise.